Carlos Correa

We’re gonna find out if the top 20 shortstops are as Ken Bonerific as the top 20 2nd basemen. Hint: they are. Damn, I gotta work on building suspense. That hint pretty much gives the whole kit away and tacks the kaboodle onto its back as it’s walking out the door. Goodbye, kit and kaboodle, I just gave you away for nothing. I am very charitable. When I go to Whole Foods, I only throw a small hissy fit when they ask me to donate money, “Take a dollar out of the $12 per pound olive bar and you donate!” To recap, this final ranking is from our Fantasy Baseball Player Rater with my comments. The Player Rater allows me to be impartial while looking at how I ranked them in the preseason. Anyway, here’s the top 20 shortstops for 2016 fantasy baseball and how they compare to where I originally ranked them:

At this point, points leagues should be over or wrapping up today (Sunday). I hate when fantasy leagues carry on into the last weeks of the MLB season and teams are handicapped when their players, usually pitchers, are shut down. In my main points league the World Series ended with week 22. No championship should be decided because one team lost its ace because he had reached his innings limit. Although there are some that will contend that is all part of the package when you roster said player. After all the Nationals did shut down Strasburg in 2012. Regardless, it is now week 25, sh!t or get off the pot!

Now that the points leagues season is over, at least as far as I am concerned, I have decided to announce my 2016 Points League Awards. Television has the Emmys. Broadway has the Tonys. Movies have the Oscars. Music has the Grammys. And points leagues have the Malamoneys.

Just a quick explanation. The “Best” category is awarded to the best overall player at a position. The “MVP” award considers other factors such as average draft position and position eligibility into its equation.

All season long I’ve been using points per plate appearance as my metric of choice when it comes to comparing players. It’s certainly not the only stat I look at, but it definitely holds its weight when I’m punching numbers into my calculator. After some consideration I realized that points per game deserves a mention as well, especially daily leagues. Knowing how many points a player averages per game is an extremely useful statistic when deciding which players to start each day. Even in weekly leagues PPG is a strong indicator of value.

As summer has come and gone and the weather starts the cool down in the Great White North, so have the Blue Jays. The Jays are still hanging on to a wild card spot, but have gone from first to third in the division. They have lost the last four divisional series, which hasn’t helped. There are 4 teams within 5 games back, all chomping at the heals of the Jays. Early in the season the pitching was a strong suit of the Jays, but now own a 4.46 xFIP so far in September. The Jays have migrated south to Anaheim and have found success. It seems all they needed was some California sunshine to get the back on the winning track. Tonight, Francisco Liriano will take the mound and look to continue the success he found in his last outing. His last outing came against the Rays, and consisted of 6.1 innings, giving up 2 runs on 3 hits and 1 walk, while earning 6 strikeouts. While the Angels don’t strike out a lot (16.7% vs LHP), they lose a lot. Nolasco will be on the mound for the Angles, who is 1-6 since being traded. And with that I give you the rest of my Saturday DFS picks.

New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well reserve your spot in the 25 Team Razzball Exclusive League set to run Monday September 19th to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. Wanna know what the best part is about signing up with us? The free subscription for the rest of the season to our DFSBot, that’s what! For details on the how to, please visit our Razzball Subscriptions page.

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Look, on the one hand, I’m ashamed that I’m quoting Not Another Teen Movie. On the other, I’m surprised this wasn’t a Keenan Ivory Wayans joint. On the third, more interesting hand that’s simply a cut out of the hamburger helper off my beefaroni box, it allows me to reference back to one of the best teen comedy movies of all time: Bring It On. Or better put, this movie has four minutes worth of Sparky Polastri, and that’s never enough and yet more than enough all at the same time. With all this said, my call today is Steven Brault or as I like to call him, ‘the guy who gets to pitch against the Phillies’. If you’ve read anything I’ve written – or wrotten, if you wanna keep with title theme – you’ll know that I love picking on Phillies. It’s September and this should be clear to you but just in case it’s not, here’s a simple flowchart for you to think about. If you’re not convinced by my conciseness, let’s consider some other facts. The Phils have the worst wRC+, the fifth worst K%, and the second worst BB% in the majors this year. The fact they’ve been on a K tear of late – second worst K% over the last 30 and worst over the last 14 and 7 – makes this call even nicer. But the real kicker here? Brault is a mere $4,500 so he’s in punt territory with 20 point upside. Seriously, this intro is AmPm: too much good stuff. But guess what, I have some even potentially greater takes down the road. So follow me past the italics, would you? Here’s my ‘y’all ready for this’ hot taeks for this Wednesday, DK slate…follow me or perish, sweater monkeys!

New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well reserve your spot in the 25 Team Razzball Exclusive League set to run Monday September 19th to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. Wanna know what the best part is about signing up with us? The free subscription for the rest of the season to our DFSBot, that’s what! For details on the how to, please visit our Razzball Subscriptions page.

Maybe it was the food poisoning I had yesterday, but I had a dream Toomgis, the AM/PM mascot, and I were driving around talking about September baseball. It feels like half the teams are either resting regulars for the playoffs, or the other teams that are out of it are resting regulars to give rookies a chance. Those are the matchups you need to capitalize on with starting pitchers. By the way, Toomgis is so obvious a creation of stoned creatives. It’s a collection of stoner food and Toomgis stands for ‘Too Much Good Stuff.’ Um, okay, but there’s an I in there. Stoner creative, “Eye-shmeye, we just need to move on before I eat our prototype.” One more Toomgis point, how is this not Colorado’s national bird? Any hoo! So, with this matchups point hidden amongst my fracking in on Toomgis, we have Jharel Cotton capitalizing. In his first major league start, 6 1/3 IP, 1 ER, 4 baserunners, 3 Ks. Jharel Cotton makes me think of Faye Dunaway in a heavy Southern accent saying, “I shall avert my eyes.” Cotton showed good control in the minors, and solid Ks, but in redraft leagues, you’re more worried about matchups this time of year. For 2017, Cotton idolized Pedro Martinez and I can see why. He’s five-eleven soaking wet (but I’m not sure people get taller when wet). He also relies on the speed of the fastball and the break of the change. A change that might carry him to glory, as soon as next year. In keepers, I’d be very interested. For this year, go with Toomgis’ advice on matchups. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

2015 was a golden year for rookies. Carlos Correa, Kris Bryant, Noah Syndergaard, Francisco Lindor, Addison Russell, Lance McCullers, Roberto Osuna, and many other youngsters made a huge impact for their respective teams during their first run through the big leagues. This season’s rookie crop hasn’t been quite as impressive as that historically productive group, but it’s been a pretty strong one as well. Corey Seager (technically in his rookie season), Trevor Story, Trea Turner, David Dahl, Jon Gray, and Michael Fulmer are some of the players who have been outstanding in their first full MLB seasons. Perhaps the brightest prospect of them all, however, especially on the pitching side, is 20-year-old Dodgers phenom Julio Urias. He’s considered by many to be the best pitching prospect in baseball over the past several years, and it’s not difficult to see why. With plus velocity (his fourseam fastball can reach 96 mph at times) and a varied arsenal (fastball/slider/curve/change) that can generate swings and misses with regularity, it doesn’t seem to be a matter of if Urias will be successful, but when. Considering he was still a teenager for the bulk of his rookie season, it’s reasonable to question whether or not Urias is ready to contribute down the stretch for fantasy owners this season. What can be expected from him over the next month or so?

Let’s take a look at his profile to determine how the rookie has been performing during his first run in MLB. Here are a few thoughts and observations:

If you’re still focused on fantasy baseball, pat yourself on the back for either making it into the playoffs or at least being in the playoff hunt. Here’s an interesting, and possibly false, stat. I started the season with thirty-one followers. I am currently down to eighteen. Seventeen of those eighteen have put themselves into a playoff position by reading my posts. The one follower that is not is my wife. She doesn’t even play fantasy baseball, she just reads my posts every week to make sure I am actually writing a post when she asks me to do something and I tell I can’t because I have to write an article. Ok, so I don’t really know how many followers I had or still have, or how many have actually benefited from my guidance, but I do know this. One hundred percent of my readers that are in the playoffs are actually in the playoffs. They’ve done studies, you know. 60% of the time, it works every time.

It’s not much of a secret, of course; or at least, it’s not an undocumented fact: the Rockies away from Coors can be a bore with the bats. Wanna know an undocumented fact? Harambe might be a more long lasting meme than Crying Jordan when all is said and done. I don’t know how I feel about that, honestly, but #DicksOutForHarambe needs to go. NOW. Or at least, the pics preceding do…because gross. But more to the point, the Rockies and the road are the antithesis of Forrest and Jenny. Ice cream and cyanide? Gingers and souls? Jose Canseco and Grey? All important things to factor here as really, Rockies are generally trashy Mctrashersons on the road, holding down the 6th worst wRC+ while K’ing the 4th most at 23.6%. And with that, we turn to our key bold faced name for the intro: A.J. Cole. Cole’s season debut wasn’t spectacular, but definitely useful as he K’d 8 Orioles over 7 IP. He finished just short of 20 points and that was without a win and in Camden Yards. You intrigued yet? Mmm-hmm, thought so. Throw in the fact he’s only $6,300 and for once, it’s alright to get a Cole in your stocking so let’s roll. Here’s my I’m still pretending summer will last forever taeks for this Saturday DK slate…

New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well reserve your spot in the 25 Team Razzball Exclusive League set to run Monday August 29th to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. Wanna know what the best part is about signing up with us? The free subscription for the rest of the season to our DFSBot, that’s what! For details on the how to, please visit our Razzball Subscriptions page.

It wasn’t very long ago that Dusty Baker’s preference at shortstop was Danny Espinosa. You know Dusty–he loves his veteran guys. Fast forward a couple of months and Espinosa is still at shortstop. Where things changed is now Trea Turner is an everyday player and the leadoff man for Washington. Turner is currently playing second base on most nights and is batting .310 with three homers and 10 steals. Multi-hit games have been Turner’s speciality with plenty of extra-base hits sprinkled in. This is DraftKings gold and Turner is a horse to ride until regression sets in. Luckily, that’s unlikely to happen at Coors Field. Batting leadoff will give Turner at least four–likely five–at-bats and he get a mediocre right-hander in Chad Bettis. His price tag of $5,400 is quite high, but it’s Trea Day, so pay up so you can get paid. The young speedster is my favorite hitter on Tuesday night.

New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well reserve your spot in the 25 Team Razzball Exclusive League set to run Monday August 22nd to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. Wanna know what the best part is about signing up with us? The free subscription for the rest of the season to our DFSBot, that’s what! For details on the how to, please visit our Razzball Subscriptions page.